Beach Dog

I am just about to start a new painting, but before I get into that, let me show you the work involved in another previous piece. This is the first sketch I did for Beach Dog. It was another drawing of images seen in scribbles, a method I use all the time to come up with new ideas. I know the mother's body looks strange and slightly distored in this drawing, but that is how it comes out sometimes when I am sketching along the random lines of the scribble.


I went quite far in this first stage of the painting, working out all the major masses. My favorite part when I quit for the day was the dog. He looked quite "painterly" to me and I was pleased with the texture of the strokes.


Here I've done another four hours' work. The clouds are almost finished, the ocean is beginning to take shape and the dog is finished too. I also spent a lot of time on her hair. The three elements that make this image have a surreal feeling are also in place; the emptiness of the dog and babys' eyes, and the mother's lack of hands.


Now the ocean is done (it is actually more green and visually separate from the sky than it looks in these pictures) and I've added more details to make the setting more real: seaweed, foam against the sand, seashells. I pored over several library books on ocean life to find reference of crabs and seashells, as I've never drawn them before. There is a small fish in this painting, can you see it?


In the final stages of the painting, you can see that I removed the crab and made her dress all seaweed. I liked the job I did on that crab, but he was just drawing too much attention and didn't seem neccessary for the image. Take a close look at the details here.